


A State Of Mutual Ignorance

by Sixthlight



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: First Time, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Sexual Discovery, Sexual Roleplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:40:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27423616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: The problem was that Yusuf – he had not yet confessed this to Nicolò, awaiting a more private moment – did not know what it was, exactly, they would do.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 69
Kudos: 793





	A State Of Mutual Ignorance

For more than a month after he first kissed Nicolò, Yusuf sailed through the world in a soft, shiny haze of joy. The way the ship heaved didn’t bother him; the seemingly inescapable crust of salt on his skin didn’t bother him; the time they spent becalmed didn’t bother him; getting killed by pirates didn’t bother him. Well, alright, the last one bothered him a little, dying was not _pleasant_ , but it had been a good clean thrust to his liver and nobody else on the ship taking them to Balansiyya had noticed him bleeding out. Sometimes that was enough, and worth praising God for.

Admittedly his attention was not very much on his prayers these days. It was on Nicolò, who had kissed him in the port at Syracuse, brief and soft as the sun was rising. Who had been his personal nemesis, and then his reluctant companion in death and rebirth, and was now by some strange miracle the other half of Yusuf’s soul, the moon in his sky. It had been a series of changes too small to see if Yusuf thought back to any one day of the last two decades, but which together, like sands of grain, towered into a dune like those they had seen together in the Empty Quarter. He had hated him once, and couldn’t properly remember it. The feeling had trickled out of Yusuf like water out of a cracked jug, which had filled up nevertheless with something else, that did not leak out but instead overflowed and was ever renewed.

Nicolò shifted on the pallet next to him, burrowing closer into Yusuf, and Yusuf was abruptly reminded that as pure and all-encompassing as his affection for him was…other parts of him were very, _very_ interested in arriving at their destination. There was no real privacy on the ship, and they had stayed aboard when they had called into ports. This did not stop some of the other sailors, which was nothing new when travelling in close quarters, but it stopped Yusuf, and – somewhat frustratingly – it was stopping Nicolò as well. If he had been willing to take charge, Yusuf would have gratefully gone along with it. Instead they were restricted to stolen kisses in the darkness, touches that felt like lightning. (Or Yusuf liked to think so; Nicolò, who had actually been struck by a lightning bolt that once in Anatolia, would probably disagree.)

The problem was that Yusuf – he had not yet confessed this to Nicolò, awaiting a more private moment – did not know what it was, exactly, they would do. He knew in principle some of the things men did with each other, or with women; he had seen them, taken in pleasure or in rage; but…he had taken sincerely as a young man the principle that men and women should save their lusts for marriage, and then he had not married, and then he had _died_ , and then – well, then there had been Nicolò, first for ill and then for good. He knew he wanted him. He knew them to be joined as truly as any marriage, their fates bound to each other. But he also wanted it to be _good_ , knew from conversations overheard that bedding someone was a matter of skill as well as desire.

So he was hoping, very badly, that Nicolò would show him the way. He had been a soldier and spent time in a Christian monastery, where it was all men. He laughed at dirty jokes and showed no particular unease or hesitance when someone propositioned him. Yusuf had never seen him take someone to bed, but then, he had not been at his side _every_ second of the last twenty years, and for the first few it was not something Nicolò would have confided in him, anyway.

He would worry that Nicolò did not want that from him at all, except for the way that he kissed him, in the unquiet dark when the ship was moored for the night, and whispered in Yusuf’s ear how much he wanted to be alone with him. So Yusuf counted the days until they reached their destination, and dreamed vaguely of what might happened then, and tried not to resent the fact that at this point, Nicolò breathing on his arm (as he was doing now) was enough to arouse him.

Two more days, he told himself. Two more days.

*

They made port, and unloaded the cargo, and were paid for their work – they could not die permanently of hunger but living for perhaps forever was much more pleasant when you had coin to pay your way – and, following the recommendation of a crewmember who had visited the city often, found a room together. It was the early afternoon, a good time to rest through the heat of the day. That seemed to be the custom here. Everything on the streets was slow. Yusuf’s heart, though, was beating rapidly. _Finally_.

The door to their room had barely shut when Nicolò kissed him hungrily. This, they had learned during their time on the ship. Yusuf clung to him as they sank down onto the sleeping pallets. He had been waiting so long; he was dizzy with wanting.

“Nicolò,” he said, and kissed the side of his face, his ear, the corner of his jaw where his beard thinned away. “Nicolò, I have wanted this for so long –”

“And I,” Nicolò said, licking his lips, his pale eyes bright. He ran his hands down Yusuf’s sides. Yusuf had a leg in between his, and moved it up; he could feel Nicolò’s hard length. Nicolò moaned and bucked his hips against Yusuf’s leg. It was intoxicating. “Yusuf, tell me what to do.”

“You mean,” Yusuf said, a little anxiously, “what I want to do?”

“I mean, tell me what to do for you,” Nicolò said, starting to flush. “I must confess – I have not – I have no experience of these things. But I want to,” he added, his lids lowering; he rubbed himself against Yusuf’s leg again, like a cat. Yusuf had not considered that he might come because of Nicolò pleasuring himself on Yusuf’s body, but apparently that was a thing that was possible. “I want to, I want you, I want _everything_ , only tell me.”

“I,” Yusuf said, for once at a loss for words. “I would very much like to do that.”

“But?” Nicolò looked alarmed.

“But I must also confess to not knowing,” he said in a rush. “I know how much I want you; I can recite you any amount of poetry about it; but none of the poetry I have ever heard about fucking is, ah, particularly educative if one has never…”

“That cannot be,” Nicolò said in disbelief. “Look at you! And you had travelled all over the western end of the Mediterranean by the time you came to Jerusalem. Surely – surely you mean, you do not know…with men?”

“I was always wary of brothels, and I would not disrespect an honourable woman,” Yusuf said. “And as for men – my heart, I did not realise that until you. I marvel sometimes I did not, for now it is obvious to me, but there you have it.” He bit his lip. “But surely you – you are handsome enough to turn any eye – and I have never seen you blush, when someone asked you to bed, even if you refused them.”

“I promise you I blushed the first few times,” Nicolò said, “but that was before we knew each other. It is better to put aside your worldly lusts, if you can; but God has set me on this path with you, and I cannot any longer…” He did blush then; he was still hard against Yusuf’s leg. “Yusuf, I want and I do not know how to have. And I hoped very badly that you did.”

“ _I_ hoped _you_ did,” Yusuf choked out, and he fell laughing onto Nicolò, still madly aroused; he had not realised that was possible, those two things together.

They fumbled their way to climax, all knees in difficult places and clumsy hands in a way they never were anymore when they fought. The best thing about it for Yusuf was the look in Nicolò’s eyes when he came, knowing that he had put it there.

“I think,” Nicolò said afterwards, “we may both have somewhat to learn.”

“I am ready for that, if you are,” Yusuf told him. They lay on the pallet and kissed until it was too sticky and unpleasant to continue. It was very nearly perfect.

*

When Nile asked Joe about this nearly a thousand years later, Joe told her it took them a good fifty years to work everything out, really, because they hadn’t had the Internet in the twelfth century. (Well, she didn’t ask about it exactly, but she asked how Nicky and he had become lovers, and he said it had taken a long time because they were both virgins waiting for the other one to take the lead, and she had said “But you _killed_ each other!” and Joe had said “Yes, that takes a lot less skill.”) He was exaggerating to some degree. It had probably only taken twenty or thirty years, in terms of what most people meant by sex. The trouble had been that they had moved frequently, and advice about what men might do in bed together was not always that easy to come by, depending on where they went and who they knew.

And – this part he didn’t tell Nile, because he knew she didn’t really want to know the details – it hadn’t been the simple things that had confused, or surprised them. Once you knew you wanted to bring someone to climax, it was a matter of paying attention to them, and to yourself. Using your hand, or your mouth, was not all that complicated (though it had taken Nicolò about a century to decide he liked using his mouth, and sometimes there were still whole decades when he simply didn’t want to.) Some things they had discovered by accident, like the first time Nicolò’s cock had slipped between Yusuf’s thighs, or the first time Yusuf had realised that he could jerk both of them together at the same time. Some things had taken work; they hadn’t really got the hang of fucking until long after they’d met Andromache and Quynh.

What had surprised Yusuf most, as the years went on, was all the things _around_ the actual acts themselves that could take it from a pleasant way to pass the time to something to drive each other mad with. Some of those took centuries for them to discover. Yusuf had learned very early on that he liked it when Nicolò worked him gently to arousal when he was still half-asleep, and that Nicolò liked it too, how pliable and open he was. But he hadn’t woken up on Nicolò’s cock, shuddering into wakefulness and climax at once, until sometime shortly before the Ottomans had taken Constantinople. Nicolò had no real patience for being teased, and so it took them a century or so to realise that Yusuf _did_ , that he could be brought to the edge two or three or five times and still enjoy begging. It turned out that Nicolò had an endless supply of patience when he was the one _doing_ the teasing, so that was well.

On the other hand, Yusuf didn’t care for discomfort in bed, and pain for him was only pain. Nicolò liked being gripped hard enough to bruise, liked being pinched, came once unexpectedly when Yusuf bit his nipple. But they were so careful with each other, after their bloody beginning, that they’d both died from bullet wounds for the first time before they came to that. The way words made Nicolò flush, however, the way he liked it when Yusuf told him what he was going to do before he did it; that didn’t take any time to figure out at all, the only barrier to it had been the edges of their shared knowledge of language.

So. The real thing they learned in nine hundred years was that there were always new things to discover.

*

“What are you thinking about?” Nicky asked him that evening.

“Just something Nile said earlier,” Joe told him. “Do you remember, in Valencia, that very first time –”

“How could I forget,” Nicky said, at once, putting down the book he was reading on his chest; he was lying on the bed. They were in a hotel in Canberra, a strange artificial shell of a city Joe had never been to before and wasn’t sure he ever needed to visit again, unless it showed extreme improvement in its next couple of centuries. “Both of us waiting for the other one to show us carnal delights –”

“Hey, we got there in the end,” Joe said, flopping down on the bed next to him. “Enthusiasm counts.”

“Not knowing any better helps a lot too,” Nicky informed him. “We thought that both of us getting off counted as success.”

“I feel like you’re impugning my sexual prowess and I don’t like it.”

“I’m impugning my own at least as much, love.”

“I will accept that,” Joe said, wriggling over and throwing an arm over Nicky, who had picked up his book again. “What do you think it would have been like, if one of us _had_ known what they were doing?”

“Hmmm,” Nicky said, and put the book down once more, in favour of cupping Joe’s face with his free hand; the other arm was trapped. “If you had really been ready to seduce me, with everything you know now…”

“Well, I have nine hundred years of experience now, that’s a very high bar,” Joe objected. “How about, everything I could reasonably have known in ten or fifteen years? And actually what I was thinking, what if _you_ had spent less time memorizing scripture and more time –”

“– learning how to suck cocks?” Nicky said. “Are we really arguing over who would have got to be the virgin in this scenario?”

“Yes, because that’s the fun bit,” Joe told him, earnestly. “The idea of someone else knowing what to do and just reaping the benefits.” He flipped himself over Nicky, so he was kneeling with one leg on either side of Nicky’s. “Although, now you mention it, the idea of getting to blow someone’s mind with how good sex can be…also has its appeal.”

“You’re never going to do that the first time,” Nicky said, picking up his book and threading it through the cage of Joe’s arms to put it on the bedside table. “People take time to learn.”

“People, really? How many people are you saying you’ve learned like that?”

“Only you.” Nicky’s expression of mild curiosity hadn’t changed, but his eyes were burning. Joe didn’t need to lower his body to know Nicky was interested. “Only you, my heart.”

Joe kissed him, slow and lush, relishing the way he knew that Nicky was going to fist a hand in his shirt and pull him in, the slightly painful way his cock was hardening, trapped in his jeans.

“How about,” he said, sucking on Nicky’s lower lip as he pulled away, “how about you get to try being the experienced one first, but we can do it how you want.”

“I don’t think you’re really getting into the spirit of this,” Nicky told him, a slow smirk curling the corner of his mouth. Joe loved it. The next sentences he spoke were in Greek, mostly; not modern Greek, but something approximating the mix of Greek and Latin and Arabic they’d spoken to each other nine hundred years ago, when they had had no one common tongue. “Yusuf. Are you telling me that…you’ve never taken anybody to bed?”

“No,” Joe said, trying to remember exactly what he’d said to Nicky nine hundred years ago and improvising, because he really couldn’t. “Don’t laugh at me, please.”

“I’m not going to laugh,” Nicky assured him, smoothing a hand across his brow and at the same time groping him through his jeans. Joe gasped, not fake at all. “Oh, I see. You’ve been thinking about this, haven’t you? Wondering what might happen.”

He already had the fly down and his hand inside Joe’s jeans; Nicky was _very_ nimble with his fingers when he wanted to be. Joe kissed him again, unable to help it and also unable to fake kissing like they had nine hundred years ago, because he was pretty sure they’d been, at best, mediocre at it. Nicky didn’t bother either; instead he kissed Joe very insistently, sucking on his tongue. He’d worked his hand inside Joe’s underwear now and was stroking him lightly, like he was figuring out what worked.

“Mmmm,” he said against Joe’s mouth. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

“I’m going to – if you don’t stop,” Joe breathed, which wasn’t actually true but felt in character.

“That’s alright,” Nicky said. “We have all night.” He tightened his fingers and pulled harder, and something about the smug certainty in his voice did it, tipping Joe over the edge in a much shorter time than it should have taken.

Nicky kissed him through it, and it wasn’t in the top ten orgasms of Joe’s life or anything (that was some _very_ serious competition) but if he really had been a virgin it would have absolutely gone straight to the top.

“Wow,” he said.

“Joe,” Nicky hissed, in English. “Nobody was saying _wow_ then.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Joe closed his eyes and concentrated on Nicky underneath him, on the idea that he’d never touched someone like this before, didn’t know what was going to happen, didn’t know how much better it could get; okay, yeah, _that_ was working. “Nicolò. That was – what about you? What do you…” He trailed off, and let his voice get rough, didn’t try for poetry. “You will have to tell me what to do, but I want to make you feel good too.”

“You will,” Nicky assured him, which tingled all the way down to Joe’s toes, and pushed Joe upright so Nicky could strip off his shirt, and then Nicky’s own; they were both in t-shirts so it wasn’t hard. He ran his hands up Joe’s chest, then brought him in for another kiss. Joe knew that Nicky was thinking that if this really _was_ their first time, Nicky would want to know if Joe liked to have his nipples played with, but that they’d worked out eight hundred and seventy years ago that Joe didn’t, so what was the point?

“Stop thinking, Yusuf,” Nicky said. He slid his hands around, and down Joe’s back, under the edge of his jeans. “Start enjoying.”

“Oh, I am enjoying this,” Joe said. He wasn’t going to get hard again just yet but he could; he trusted Nicky to get him there. He made a noise at the back of his throat as Nicky’s hands slipped lower. “Are you – are you going to fuck me?”

“Would you like me to, Yusuf?” Nicky said against his chest.

Joe swallowed, finally getting into the right frame of mind. “I have not – that is –”

“It feels good,” Nicky purred, pressing against the base of his spine, his fingers slipping down, and down. “Let me show you.”

“Yeah,” Joe said, breathlessly.

Nicky stripped him out of his jeans and opened him up slowly, stopping what felt like every thirty seconds to ask how it was feeling; Joe was enough into the whole thing at this point that it was hot, the idea of Nicky wanting to make sure his first time was as good as it could be.

“You’re doing so well,” Nicky whispered in his ear, fucking him with three fingers, and Joe moaned, and then moaned a lot louder, genuinely taken by surprise, when Nicky crooked his fingers and found his prostate. (That had _definitely_ not happened their real first time.)

“What was – _ahhhhhh_ ,” he said, when Nicky did it again, his cock twitching and leaking. “Fuck, Nicky –”

“I told you it feels good,” Nicky said, smugly, clearly equally into this whole thing. “Wait a moment for me.”

“Hey,” Joe complained, when Nicky pulled his fingers out and then, the bastard, _got off the bed_. He couldn’t help humping the sheets, breathless. “Where are you going?”

“I had a thought,” Nicky said, rummaging in their bags, and was back a second later, pressing something into Joe which was definitely not his fingers _or_ his cock; Joe recognised it, even helplessly sex-hazed, as the tip of his favourite vibrating buttplug. “You should know how good _all_ of this feels.”

“This is _cheating,_ ” Joe said, even as Nicky got the plug nestled up against his prostate and gave the end of it a tap. His toes curled, pleasure making his tongue thick. “This is – we did _not_ have these nine hundred years ago. Or know where to get them, anyway.”

“Look, I’m improvising,” Nicky said, “I didn’t notice you protesting that I didn’t stop to go and pick up olive oil instead of lube, and we’re also a lot cleaner than we were then.”

“Speak for yourself.”

Nicky twisted the plug, which was _also_ cheating; Joe gasped and humped the bed a bit more, thinking about what this would be like if he really was a virgin; he’d be out of his mind by now. He nearly was anyway, because it was Nicky. “Nicolò – Nicolò, I thought you were going to fuck me, _please – ”_

“I had a better idea.” Nicky was starting to sound breathless himself. Joe knew it would be because he was fingering himself, kneeling behind Joe; he could hear the soft sounds of it. Inexperienced Yusuf, who he was pretending to be, would have no idea. 

“What are you doing?” he asked, getting up on his elbows and trying to look around.

“One moment,” Nicky said. “Mmmmm. Roll over, Yusuf.”

Joe did, clenching around the plug for the feel of it. Nicky crawled up until he was sitting astride him, pausing to lean down and kiss him. Joe reached up to cup the side of his face, remembering at once how it had felt to kiss him that first time, impossible and yet real, and how it felt now, an unerasable fact of his life; he breathed, he loved Nicky.

“Yusuf,” Nicky said against his mouth, and then sat back, reaching for Joe’s cock, and slid down onto it. Joe arched up into him, mouth opening soundlessly, filled and taking and taken all at once.

“You feel incredible,” Joe said. “Nicolò, Nicolò, please.”

“Do you even know what you’re begging for?” Nicky said, low and entirely fond.

“No,” Joe said, even as the words lay on his tongue; _ride me, use me, let me come buried in you_.

“Let me show you,” Nicky said, again, and started to ride him, rising and falling fast, powered by those magnificent thighs. Joe wouldn’t have minded doing this for as long as Nicky wanted, but if this was his first time, he’d have come right away, and he was going to – he wasn’t going to last like this.

“Nicolò,” he begged again. “I can’t – this is too good –”

“Don’t hold back,” Nicky said, stripping his own cock ruthlessly, and Joe came the next time he sank down, reaching up to hold Nicky there without conscious thought, Nicky so hot and tight around him, the plug still nestled inside him, overwhelmed in the most delicious way. Nicky splashed across his chest as he started to come down, and it made him hitch up again, chasing the last fading echoes of his orgasm.

“Fuck, that was good,” Nicky said as he climbed off, the sort of blunt declaration Joe treasured from him. He took care of clean-up before he lay down next to Joe, gentle and thorough. Joe buried his face in Nicky’s neck.

“You would have ruined me for anybody else, my heart,” he said. “If you’d done _that_ to me in Valencia.”

“I thought I did that anyway,” Nicky said.

“You did,” Joe assured him, and they lay there holding each other, exchanging quiet kisses to cheeks, noses, necks, occasionally coming back to brush their mouths together.

“So,” Nicky said, after a while; Joe had dozed, though not actually fallen asleep. “When’s my turn?”

“Mmmmm,” Joe said, stretching and thinking about it. They were flying out tomorrow evening; they had time. He thought about what he would have wanted to do with Nicolò, for him, if he’d known, all that time ago. It was – yeah. 

He leant in and kissed Nicky, carefully, like he wasn’t sure how Nicky was going to respond. Nicky smiled into it, and put his hand on Joe’s thigh. 

“Yusuf,” he said. “I have wanted – tell me what to do.”

“You mean,” Joe said, “Nicolò, you haven’t –”

“No,” Nicky said, widening his eyes, “but I want to, I have wanted you for so long.” He licked his lips. His Nicky, Joe thought smugly, was a much better actor than anybody ever gave him credit for.

“Oh, Nicolò, beloved,” Joe purred, running a hand up his chest. “Please. Let me show you.”


End file.
